Andrew O

Head of Product, builder

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

For most of my career the bottleneck was building. Not enough time. Not enough skill. Not enough energy after the day job.

Now I can go from idea to working prototype in a day. The bottleneck flipped. The hard part isn't building, it's deciding what's worth building.

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

4/4 If your synthetic customer loves everything, you've built a mirror, not a critic.

Full writeup on how I built her https://t.co/J9eR5aWcJr

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

🧵1/4 I built a synthetic customer from real customer research. She's an HR manager, mid-40s, 420 employees, been burned by wellness apps before. She's the hardest critic on my product team and she's most useful when she says no.

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

3/4 These aren't survey responses. They're the conversations you don't normally get to rehearse.

She's only as good as the source material. No amount of prompting compensates for thin research. She works because she's built from real people, not assumptions

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

7/7 If the idea scores below 9/15, I kill it that day. No "let me build a quick prototype and see." No "maybe the market just needs educating."
The graveyard of failed apps is full of products that needed the market educating.

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

1/7 I don't validate ideas. I validate demand that already exists.
Before I write a line of code, I need a 9/15 on this scorecard or the idea is dead. Here's what I check:

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

6/7 The spreadsheet test. My favourite signal: are people already solving this with a spreadsheet or notebook? That means the job-to-be-done is real. They just need a better tool. You're not creating demand, you're serving it.

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

6/6 The irony: your competitors are paying for App Store placement, running ads, acquiring users and those users are publicly documenting every mistake for you to learn from. For free.

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

1/6 Reading 1-star reviews as a business strategy..

Want a cheat code for building apps people actually want? Go read the 1-star reviews of your competitors.

Not the 5-stars. Not the 3-stars. The angry ones. Here's why:

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

5/6 I keep a simple doc with competitor review quotes grouped by theme. Pain points, missing features, pricing complaints.

It takes an afternoon. It replaces months of user interviews you'd never actually do as a solo dev.

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

I don't validate demand by asking people if they'd use my app. I validate it by finding people who are already angry that a good one doesn't exist.

Reddit, forums, App Store reviews.

One day.

If the frustration isn't already loud, I move on.

[Andrew O @Appliquette]

The playbook: find a niche hobby where people are frustrated with spreadsheets, build a mobile app that replaces it, charge once. Repeat.